Imagine, if you will...

a young child standing at a closed door, listening with young ears to a loud conversation within that closed off room.

Voices raised, "I hate it!  I hate the-the-the... insults!  I hate the hate!"

And what caused this yelling moment?

The response tells all.  "You're paying too much attention to idiots.  They are fighting the wrong war.  They have the wrong enemy.  They have no idea."  The voice saying these words is calm.  "Don't worry, we remain in control of them."

"Why this black this, hate that, blankety black that?  Why is everyone calling my stuff black?  Why am I suddenly bad black, whatever that means?"

What stuff, this child wonders, is the cause of anger, and what was the color black being bad?

"I am going to tell you once more.  This is not the time to be angry.  Get a grip."

"Grip what?"

"The thing you always hold onto.  Sanity."

Calming voices join in.  There must be many people in that closed room.  A woman's voice is heard in tones that sound like a ringing glass bell.

"You have been told this many times.  You have kept your head, and now is not the time to lose your temper.  Temper.  Temper," as if the word itself, a name and a command in a single word.  Where had he heard that before, that little child outside the closed door.  "Temper.  Temper."

Oh, right.  When he was about three, and he'd thrown his new truck, a birthday present into the pond in the back yard.  He never did  get the truck back, even if he had laughed and jumped up and down when Grampa had given it to him.  His mother, using those same dulcet tones had cautioned him to settle down.  He'd been yelping with joy for over five minutes, which was some sort of family limit on happiness.

Then he'd had the truck snatched away, and he yelled again, without a moment or thought of joy.  Joy was gone, anger was there, and anger was what he remembered of birthdays.

"This latest is the worst.  I am the ruler of all that is supposed to be going on, and you are telling me that the 'natives are restless?'  That voice was also oddly familiar.  It was as if this young child, standing there by the door in his baggy jeans and torn tee shirt with a worn logo on the front of it, had been transported to some land where everyone spoke like the television voices he heard at 2 am after his parents had been fighting and sleep would not descend into his own bed where a teddy was soaked with tears.

A fist slammed into a table.  Glass broke.  The woman's voice grew shrill.  Suddenly her voice, which had been sounding too low for the little one to understand her words clearly, was heard clearly.  "and you are a flipping idiot."

Well, whoever was behind that door was getting some talking to.  "Can you be this stupid?  Forget it.  You'll be dead by morning."

"I'm going to tell all.  The truth.  Confess."  This was heard as an almost whisper, a voice so raspy he could not tell who had spoken. 

"Check the post.  Front pages.  You.  Are.  Now.  Dead."  That voice was lower, and had the timbre of the voice of God the little boy had heard in church when the story of Noah had been told.

Someone was rattling the doorknob.  The little boy ducked behind the cabinet ten feet down the hallway, turning so the plant he hid behind would not betray his location.

What had he heard?

What was there to confess?  Does confession mean death will follow?

What was the black, the bad, the anger, the breakage?

What indeed had happened?  And, was this child, eavesdropping by a door, reliable in the days to come, enough to shed light on what had happened inside the room?

Where indeed was the room.  And were events in that room in the near past, the present, or were they imaginings?

How many people came out of the room?  Where did they go?

And what happened to the boy beside the cabinet, ducked down behind a potted plant?

Imagine, is f you will...